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This will interest you Gill, although it's unrelated to the title of this thread. At my shop, I had to sort through two huge crates of sheet music for the guitar. It's not the sort of thing that would sell as much as piano organ or violin and indeed there was a lot of photocopies and/or torn/sellotaped stuff that we can't sell anyway and I had to send to the central distribution point (the 'book barn'). I've still got a shelf full of the stuff and I don't think any of it would go as it's a very specialist market. Might do in Oxford or Cambridge, but not here!

It's overkill. Remember when they decided to give us Wogan three times a week? Or when Coronation Street was on on Monday and Wednesday at 7.30?? There's such a thing as too much of a good thing, and that's when things start to go downhill fast. They're close to that with the GB Bake Off and it already happened with the Weakest Link. The broadcasters have killed it.

Then there's the smug and cocky little twosome on Pointless who think they're God's gift to witty repartee. As far as I'm concerned, that show is like Wogan in the 80's. An over-egged pudding.

I've seen the first episode of Birds and quite frankly it's not the same as it was in the Nineties. I think I'd rather read a book or play some scales, at least I might learn something...

At least Great British Railway Journeys with old Portaloo is back, only trouble is I haven't seen any of the new series. I've either been making my way across the Second City on the way home from my Oxfam, or been in the kitchen preparing food, watching piano tutorial vids on the Tube or, erm, playing scales and things.

Gather Her Majesty Queen Margaret I's former Transport Minister was travelling through Southport the other day, we were there for a week in June 2012. Great place, wonderful architecture and shops, didn't see the sea once. What a bloody wonderful holiday that was......... a memorable first day.

A treat on the first Voice with not one but TWO piano playing music students, Ryan Green from Essex who sang and played on stage did not get picked, however Anna McLuckie, although a pianist, played the Pharell Williams/Daft Punk number on her clarsach and joined will.i.am's team

More pianists. And more Brummies. More Brummie pianists please. I'd pay £700 licence fee to see that!

I'd pay that to see all the BBC departments moved from our city to M**c***t*r in the 90s and 00s back to Birmingham. In 2000 the BBC closed a perfectly good provincial base, Pebble Mill, demolished it and now all we have is a small local radio station and a small regional TV studio in the Mailbox. Yet Pebble Mill has made some of the BBC's best telly since 1971 - my favourite Birmingham produced TV show was 'Boys from the Blackstuff' in the 1980s.

The media seem to have had this fixation with M**c***t*r for years, ITV's Midlands studios are nothing more than an office on Bridge Street B1. Noele Gordon would indeed be turning in her grave!!

There used to be this female vocal group called The Poozies that Sally (The Voice) used to be a member of. I used to have their album 'Chantoozies' on tape. I remember the album because there's a track on there in Gàidhlig.

When I heard the name 'Sally Barker' I thought 'no it can't be the Sally Barker from the Poozies but it is!

Indeed he did, 'Titches Pitch'. And he was on Nationwide as well, I think.

Not many people remember 'Saturday Night at the Mill' where Kenny Ball was the artist in residence. The old 'Farming' programme with Dan Cherrington was produced at Pebble Mill and it has transmorphed into Countryfile, which is the only networked TV programme that's made in Brum....and that'll be moving to Bristol soon if reports are to be believed. We'll only have The Archers left and it'll only be a matter of time before we lose that.

It started out as PM at One, with Bob Langley, Marian Foster (who doubled as a pianist) Donnie MacLeod and David Seymour. Then it dropped its 'at One' even though it kept its timeslot, only to get it back again towards the 80s. Claire Rayner began her TV career on there also, and this man who could caterwaul moreso than sing never seemed to be off the programme. His name was Tony Christie. I guess he must have lived locally and come cheap. I was more interested in Watch With Mother afterwards in the earlier days. Camberwick Green, Joe, Teddy Edward etc (narrated by Richard Baker YET ANOTHER pianist, albeit secretive at the time)

A brand new Dental Hospital is now being built on the site of Pebble Mill as part of a huge science park development, given its close proximity to the University of Birmingham main campus and the A38 Bristol Road corridor. Maybe they should name the new hospital after Bob Langley?

I used to like Bod. Bod and Farmer Barleymow, no, that's not snap, is it??

And Chorlton and The Wheelies on ATV. All those men with wheels for legs, with a green dragon called Chorlton keeping them safe from harm. I refuse to believe that show was not created on four or more magic mushrooms.

Telly was so much fun in those days. The testcard and all those groovy tracks they used to play was my number one TV show. It was TV heaven. Then Channel 4 came along, new, electronic testcard and a fresh selection of KPM and Bruton accompanying music. I've got 8 of the 9 Channel 4 tapes from 1982 on the other computer and I stick them on a CD and play them in the shop when I'm on!!!

Gill the Piano wrote:Ed Balls is an example of nominative determinism, since that's what he spouts most of the time. Michael Ball is the one you WOULD prefer to be stuck in a lift with.

I think I WOULD prefer to be stuck in a lift with Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor. I would ask him why his party isn't talking about taxing the bankers and the other filthy rich, and helping poor OAP's to pay their rising fuel costs and food bills amongst other paupers of our society. He wouldn't be able to escape beyond the confines of the lift, unlike the Newsnight studio, where he can just get up and leave, John Nott style.

Michael Portillo is certainly a better television presenter than he was a politician and this morning, I caught up with all the GB Railway Journey programmes from this year. I now know, amongst other facts, the origins of the phrase 'cock and bull'. It comes from Stony Stratford where there are two inns, the Cock and the Bull. Portillo had an overnight stay at the Cock. There is a blindingly obvious political joke there. If he'd stayed at the Bull, the joke would still had stood.

He's in Looga Borooga tonight, if the trailer is correct. But I'll be cooking - as per usual.

more Bucks miscellany, the origins of the Olney hymns were featured last week, written by William Cowper and some other bloke. Glorious Things Of Thee Are Spoken was sung on the programme....to the Haydn tune of Deutschlandlied.

And Flog It were at the Central Museum and Art Gallery in Chamberlain Square yesterday. I guess they would have used the Edwardian Tea Rooms to do their filming - and I said months ago they've given our city a wide berth in the past???

A former piano teacher informed me they have a lovely antique grand in there, but it wasn't on view last time I went in there. It really is lovely in there but I think some lovely flora and fauna in there would give it some real airiness and spacy ambience. That and the piano, plus someone playing the thing as the Conservatoire's just across the tiny Chamberlain Square.

I've seen every series of 'Island Parish' on BBC2 and even though I do not believe in god, I find the programmes most fascinating and enlightening being centred upon the various communities and the churches at the centre of them, as portrayed. They've been to Sark (small island off the coast of France and not part of the UK, but a British Crown Dependency and where cars are banned) once before and this series is there again, chronicling how the islanders spent 2013. Music featured prominently last night and we were given a little peep into 'Sark's Got Talent' which featured a very nervous piano playing teaching assistant Lydia. But we were also introduced to (Anglican) church organist Kevin Adams who seems really pleasant and likeable. Like our Gill!

BBC2's Great Interior Design Challenge featured rooms in Victorian houses on Chantry Road in the Birmingham suburb of Moseley (where the bookshop I help out in is situated - and also the street in which the church hall I did my grade 3 is located). One of the contestants had to redesign a music room belonging to a musical couple, one of whom was a retired piano teacher. I wonder if she knows our shop sells sheet music from as little as 49p?

Just watched a fantastic programme on catchup about how breakfast television in Britain started in the 1980s, with Frank Bough/Selina Scott on BBC1 versus David Frost/Anna Ford and later Anne Diamond/Roland Rat on TV-am. There used to be this guy called Bill Buckley who used to write off-beat topical songs and perform them at the piano and a short clip of him was featured last night. He also did That's Life with Esther Rantzen also. No mention of Michaelacakes Strachan and even Timmy Mallett, sadly!

Now I am so eager to want to put my foot through the thing. Just brought my wife her dinner to find a programme on one of these cable channels she insists on having, featuring someone doing something rather naughty to a sedated male rhinoceros at a zoo. A British zoo as well.

Bill Buckley often broadcasts on BBC local radio; I've heard him on various stations (we get 3 different BBC local radio stations here). i like him. He won Come Dine with Me when it was still a serious foodie programme rather than a random assemblage of egoists with personality disorders.
I fully intend to boycott the telly for the next few weeks, just watching Pobol Y Cwm and antiques programmes and quizzes if they haven't been relegated owing to a preponderance of prats.Private Eye has a brilliant cover this week; England team getting off plane and the pilot leaning out saying 'Shall i keep the engine running?'

New series of Great British Bake Off begins this evening. I've had a look at the contestants and unlike in previous series, not a single one is from the Midlands.

I'll also be prepared to wager that every one of those contestants will be employed and from middle class backgrounds. Why doesn't the BBC have at least half of its GBBO contestants as benefit claiming, unemployed, council housed working class and POOR (the overwhelming majority these days), and just wanting to express themselves through their food? But nee nee, they'd rather persistently vilify and smear us with inequitous lying Love like 'Benefits Street'.

I think I'd rather be watching the competing from the National Eisteddfod on S4C than counting how many times the cliched 'soggy bottom' term will be used. Fat chance of that, I spose?

That would be good. Yes, it'll be the usual mix of vicars' wives, army wives, and everything else that excites the Daily Mail readership....though I can only think of contestant Ali Imdad who is not in any way middle class, over confident or in love with the self. He still lives in Alum Rock (impoverished suburb of east Birmingham).

I wonder if the Guardian will be live blogging the show: 8.22pm, Paul says 'soggy bottom' again, we make that the 9th time it has been used. Pass the cannabis PLEASE.

Gill the Piano wrote:Isn't there a very young contestant this year? I thought I read/heard something somewhere...

Yes there is, with the customary silver spoon in mouth.

Escape To The Country is another mickeytake. Why don't they find a home for a family stuck in a hostel for the homeless, or even living on the streets. Never mind the inglenook fireplace and Belfast sink, this house will provide you with the shelter and comfort that is your basic human right. Yet again, no.

Honestly, if I had my way I would telephone Virgin Media and tell them to stick their XL package into a hole where there is no electricity to run television sets. I just want to pick up a book and read it. Go back to basics, so holistic!

Gather his marriage was breaking down at the time of filming, with the redtops and even the Daily Torygraph milking it for all they could. But the evidence was plain to see last year with Ruby Tandoh. At least when Frank Bough did it, he did it in style!!!

Part of Dave's 10 point planifesto to restore sanity to British life, cancellation of Virgin subscription, deployment of antenna on roof, saving of £17 per month and enjoyment of programmes on BBC4. And rediscovery and frequent usage of the 'off' facility. If you have to put up with the c**p we have to endure in this house day in day out you would.....VOTE FOR DAVE!